第 22 页

The two beds in the single room of the cabin were occupied by the family; while I slept upon the floor by the fire, with my blankets for a couch and a roll of homespun for a pillow, which the women called "heading." They often said, "Let me give you some heading for your bed." We waited until eight o'clock the next day for the mists to rise from the swamps. My daily trouble was now upon me. How could I remunerate a southerner for his cost of keeping me, when not, in the true sense of the word, an invited guest to his hospitality?

Wilson Edge sat by the fire, while his wife and little ones were preparing to accompany me to see the paper boat. "Mr. Edge," I stammered, "you have treated me with great kindness, your wife has been put to some inconvenience as I came in so unexpected a manner, and you will really oblige me if you will accept a little money for all this; though money cannot pay for your hospitality. Grant my wish, and you will send me away with a light heart." The poor Cracker lowered his head and slowly ran his fingers through his coal black hair. For a moment he seemed studying a reply, and then he spoke as though HE represented the whole generous heart of the south.

"Stranger," he slowly articulated,"Stranger, I have known white men to be niggers enough to take a stranger's money for lodgings and vittles, but I am not that man."

We found the canoe as it had been left the night before, and I was soon pulling down the river. The great wilderness was traversed thirty miles to the county town of Conwayborough, where the negroes roared with laughter at the working of the double paddle, as I shot past the landing-place where cotton and naval stores were piled, waiting to be lightered nine miles to Pot Bluff, -- so called from the fact of a pot being lost from a vessel near it, -- which place is reached by vessels from New York drawing twelve feet of water. Though still a long distance from the ocean, I was beginning to feel its tidal influences. At Pot Bluff, the landing and comfortable home of its owner, Mr. Z. W. Dusenberry, presented a pleasant relief after the monotony of the great pine forests. This enterprising business man made my short stay a very pleasant one.

Wednesday, January 20th, was cold for this latitude, and ice formed in thin sheets in the water-pails. Twenty-two miles below Pot Bluff, Bull Creek enters the Waccamaw from the Peedee River. At the mouth of this connecting watercourse is Tip Top, the first rice plantation of the Waccamaw. The Peedee and its sister stream run an almost parallel course from Bull Creek to Winyah Bay, making their debouchure close to the city of Georgetown. Steam sawmills and rice plantations take the place of the forests from a few miles below Tip Top to the vicinity of Georgetown.

Mr. M. L. Blakely, of New York, one of the largest shingle manufacturers of the south, occupied as his headquarters the Bates Hill Plantation, on the Peedee. This gentleman had invited me, through the medium of the post-office, to visit him in the rice-growing regions of South Carolina. To reach his home I took the short "cut-off" which Bull Creek offered, and entered upon the strongest of head-currents. The thick yellow, muddy torrent of the Peedee rushed through Bull Creek with such volume, that I wondered if it left much water on the other side to give character to the river, as it followed its own channel to Winyah Bay.

One and a half miles of vigorous paddling brought me to a branch of the watercourse, which is much narrower than the main one, and is consequently called Little Bull Creek. This also comes from the Peedee River, and its source is nearer to the Bates Hill plantation than the main Bull Creek. To urge the canoe up this narrow stream three miles and a half to the parent river Peedee, was a most trying ordeal. At times the boat would not move a hundred feet in five minutes, and often, as my strength seemed failing me, I caught the friendly branches of trees, and held on to keep the canoe from being whirled down the current towards the Waccamaw. After long and persistent efforts had exhausted my strength, I was about to seek for a resting-place in the swamp, when a view of the broad Peedee opened before me, and with vigorous strokes of the paddle the canoe slowly approached the mighty current. A moment more and it was within its grasp, and went flying down the turbulent stream at the rate of ten miles an hour.

A loud halloo greeted me from the swamp, where a party of negro shingle-makers were at work. They manned their boat, a long cypress dug-out, and followed me. Their employer, who proved to be the gentleman whose abiding-place I was now rapidly approaching, sat in the stern. We landed together before the old plantation house, which had been occupied a few years before by members of the wealthy and powerful rice-planting aristocracy of the Peedee, but was now the temporary home of a northern man, who was busily employed in guiding the labors of his four hundred freedmen in the swamps of North and South Carolina.

The paper canoe had now entered the regions of the rice-planter. Along the low banks of the Peedee were diked marshes where, before the civil war, each estate produced from five thousand to forty thousand bushels of rice annually, and the lords of rice were more powerful than those of cotton, though cotton was king. The rich lands here produced as high as fifty-five bushels of rice to the acre, under forced slave labor; now the free blacks cannot wrest from nature more than twenty-five or thirty bushels.

Fine old mansions lined the river's banks, but the families had been so reduced by the ravages of war, that I saw refined ladies, who had been educated in the schools of Edinburgh, Scotland, overseeing the negroes as they worked in the yards of the rice-mills. The undaunted spirit of these southern ladies, as they worked in their homes now so desolate, roused my admiration.

A light, graceful figure, enveloped in an old shawl, and mounted on an old horse, flitted about one plantation like a restless spirit.

"That lady's father," said a gentleman to me, "owned three plantations, worth three millions of dollars, before the war. There is a rice-mill on one of the plantations which cost thirty thousand dollars. She now fights against misfortune, and will not give up. The Confederate war would not have lasted six months if it had not been for our women. They drove thousands of us young men into the fight; and now, having lost all, they go bravely to work, even taking the places of their old servants in their grand old homes. It's hard for them, though, I assure you."

On Tuesday, January 25th, I paddled down the Peedee, stopping at the plantations of Dr. Weston and Colonel Benjamin Allston. The latter gentleman was a son of one of the governors of South Carolina. He kindly gave me a letter of introduction to Commodore Richard Lowndes, who lived near the coast. From the Peedee I passed through a cut in the marshes into the broad Waccamaw, and descended it to Winyah Bay.

Georgetown is located between the mouths of the Peedee and Sampit rivers. Cautiously approaching the city, I landed at Mr. David Risley's steam saw-mills, and that gentleman kindly secreted my boat in a back counting-room, while I went up town to visit the post-office. By some, to me, unaccountable means, the people had heard of the arrival of the paper boat, and three elaborately dressed negro women accosted me with, "Please show wees tree ladies de little paper boat."

Before I had reached my destination, the post-office, a body of men met me, on their way to the steam-mill. The crowd forced me back to the canoe, and asked so many questions that I was sorely taxed to find answers for these gentlemen. There were three editors in the crowd: two were white men, one a negro. The young men, who claimed the position of representatives of the spirit of the place and of the times, published "The Comet," while the negro, as though influenced by a spirit of sarcasm, conducted "The Planet." The third newspaper represented at the canoe reception was the " Georgetown Times," which courteously noticed the little boat that had come so far. "The Planet" prudently kept in the dark, and said nothing, but "The Comet," representing the culture of the young men of the city, published the following notice of my arrival:

"Tom Collins has at last arrived in his wonderful paper boat. He has it hitched to Mr. Risley's new saw-mill, where every one can have a view. He intends shooting off his six-pounder before weighing anchor in the morning. Hurrah for Collins."

I left Mr. Risley's comfortable home before noon the next day, and followed the shores of Winyah Bay towards the sea. Near Battery White, on the right shore, in the pine forests, was the birth-place of Marion, the brave patriot of the American revolution, whose bugle's call summoned the youth of those days to arms.

When near the inlet, the rice-plantation marshes skirted the shore for some distance. Out of these wet lands flowed a little stream, called Mosquito Creek, which once connected the North Santee River with Winyah Bay, and served as a boundary to South Island. The creek was very crooked, and the ebb-tide strong. When more than halfway to Santee River I was forced to leave the stream, as it had become closed by tidal deposits and rank vegetation.

The ditches of rice plantations emptied their drainage of the lowlands into Mosquito Creek. Following a wide ditch to the right, through fields of rich alluvial soil, which had been wrested by severe toil from nature, the boat soon reached the rice-mill of Commodore Richard Lowndes. A little further on, and situated in a noble grove of live-oaks, which were draped in the weird festoons of Spanish moss, on the upland arose the stately home of the planter, who still kept his plantation in cultivation, though on a scale of less magnitude than formerly. It was, indeed, a pleasant evening that I passed in the company of the refined members of the old commodore's household, and with a pang of regret the next day I paddled along the main canal of the lowlands, casting backward glances at the old house, with its grand old trees. The canal ended at North Santee Bay.

While I was preparing to ascend the river a tempest arose, which kept me a weary prisoner among the reeds of the rice marsh. The hollow reeds made poor fuel for cooking, and when the dark, stormy night shut down upon me, the damp soil grew damper as the tide arose, until it threatened to overflow the land. For hours I lay in my narrow canoe waiting for the tidal flood to do its worst, but it receded, and left me without any means of building a fire, as the reeds were wet by the storm. The next afternoon, being tired of this sort of prison-life, and cramped for lack of exercise, I launched the canoe into the rough water, and crossing to Crow Island found a lee under its shores, which permitted me to ascend the river to the mouth of Atchison Creek, through which I passed, two miles, to the South Santee River.

All these rivers are bordered by rice plantations, many of them having been abandoned to the care of the freedmen. I saw no white men upon them. Buildings and dikes are falling into ruins, and the river freshets frequently inundate the land. Many of the owners of these once valuable estates are too much reduced in wealth to attempt their proper cultivation. It is in any case difficult to get the freedmen to work through an entire season, even when well paid for their services, and they flock to the towns whenever opportunity permits.

The North and South Santee rivers empty into the Atlantic, but their entrances are so shallow that Georgetown Entrance is the inlet through which most of the produce of the country - pitch, tar, turpentine, rice, and lumber -- finds exit to the sea. As I left the canal, which, with the creek, makes a complete thoroughfare for lighters and small coasters from one Santee River to the other, a renewal of the tempest made me seek shelter in an old cabin in a negro settlement, each house of which was built upon piles driven into the marshes. The old negro overseer of the plantation hinted to me that his "hands were berry spicious of ebbry stranger," and advised me to row to some other locality. I told him I was from the north, and would not hurt even one of the fleas which in multitudes infested his negroes' quarters; but the old fellow shook his head, and would not be responsible for me if I staid there all night. A tall darkey, who had listened to the conversation, broke in with, "Now, uncle, ye knows dat if dis gemmum is from de norf he is one of wees, and ye must du fur him jis dis time." But "Uncle Overseer" kept repeating, "Some niggers here is mity spicious. Du not no who white man is anyhow." "Well, uncle," replied the tall black, "ef dis man is a Yankeemans, Ise will see him froo."

Then he questioned me, while the fleas, having telegraphed to each other that a stranger had arrived, made sad havoc of me and my patience.

"My name's Jacob Gilleu; what's yourn?" I gave it. "Whar's your home?" came next. "I am a citizen of the United States," I replied. "De 'Nited States -- whar's dat? neber hurd him afore," said Jacob Gilleu. Having informed him it was the land which General Grant governed, he exclaimed: "O, you's a Grant man; all rite den; you is one of wees -- all de same as wees. Den look a-here, boss. I send you to one good place on Alligator Creek, whar Seba Gillings libs. He black man, but he treat you jes like white man."

Jacob helped me launch my boat through the soft mud, which nearly stalled us; and following his directions I paddled across the South Santee and coasted down to Alligator Creek, where extensive marshes, covered by tall reeds, hid the landscape from my view. About half a mile from the mouth of the creek, which watercourse was on my direct route to Bull's Bay, a large tide-gate was found at the mouth of a canal. This being wide open, I pushed up the canal to a low point of land which rose like an island out of the rushes. Here was a negro hamlet of a dozen houses, or shanties, and the ruins of a rice-mill. The majority of the negroes were absent working within the diked enclosures of this large estate, which before the war had produced forty thousand bushels of rice annually. Now the place was leased by a former slave, and but little work was accomplished under the present management.

Seba Gillings, a powerfully built negro, came to the dike upon which I had landed the canoe. I quickly told him my story, and how I had been forced to leave the last negro quarters. I used Jacob Gilleu's name as authority for seeking shelter with him from the damps of the half-submerged lands. The dignified black man bade me "fear nuffing, stay here all de night, long's you please; treat you like white man. I'se mity poor, but gib you de berry best I hab." He locked my boat in a rickety old storehouse, and gave me to understand "dat niggers will steal de berry breff from a man's mouff."